Many scientific and industrial works involve drilling underground wells. The total number of such objects in Russia alone is hardly calculable. But legendary Kola superdeep has remained unsurpassed since the 1990s, extending more than 12 kilometers deep into the Earth! It was drilled not for economic gain, but out of purely scientific interest - to find out what processes are occurring inside the planet.

Kola superdeep well. First stage drilling rig (depth 7600 m), 1974

50 candidates per position

The most amazing well in the world is located in the Murmansk region, 10 kilometers west of the city of Zapolyarny. Its depth is 12,262 meters, the diameter of the upper part is 92 centimeters, the diameter of the lower part is 21.5 centimeters.

The well was laid in 1970 in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of V.I. Lenin. The choice of location was not accidental - it is here, on the territory of the Baltic Shield, that the oldest rocks, which are three billion years old, come to the surface.

Since the end of the 19th century, the theory has been known that our planet consists of a crust, mantle and core. But where exactly one layer ends and the next begins, scientists could only guess. According to the most common version, granites go down up to three kilometers, then basalts, and at a depth of 15-18 kilometers the mantle begins. All this had to be tested in practice.

Underground exploration in the 1960s resembled a space race, with leading countries trying to get ahead of each other. It was believed that at great depths there are rich deposits of minerals, including gold.

The Americans were the first to drill ultra-deep wells. In the early 1960s, their scientists discovered that the Earth's crust was much thinner under the oceans. Therefore, the area near the island of Maui (one of the Hawaiian Islands), where the earth’s mantle is located at a depth of approximately five kilometers (plus a 4-kilometer layer of water), was chosen as the most promising place for work. But both attempts by US researchers ended in failure.

The Soviet Union needed to respond with dignity. Our researchers proposed creating a well on the continent - despite the fact that it took longer to drill, the result promised to be successful.

The project became one of the largest in the USSR. There were 16 research laboratories working at the well. Getting a job here was no less difficult than getting into the cosmonaut corps. Ordinary employees received triple salary and an apartment in Moscow or Leningrad. Not surprisingly, there was no staff turnover at all, and at least 50 candidates applied for each position.

Space sensation

Drilling to a depth of 7263 meters was carried out using a conventional serial installation, which at that time was used in oil or gas production. This stage took four years. Then there was a year-long break for the construction of a new tower and installation of a more powerful Uralmash-15000 installation, created in Sverdlovsk and called “Severyanka”. Its work used the turbine principle - when not the entire column rotates, but only the drilling head.

With every meter passed, the excavation became more difficult. Previously it was believed that the temperature of the rock, even at a depth of 15 kilometers, would not exceed 150 °C. But it turned out that at a depth of eight kilometers it reached 169 °C, and at a depth of 12 kilometers it reached 220 °C!

The equipment quickly broke down. But the work continued without stopping. The task of being the first in the world to reach the 12-kilometer mark was politically important. It was solved in 1983 - just in time for the start of the International Geological Congress in Moscow.

Congress delegates were shown soil samples taken from a record depth of 12 kilometers, and a trip to the well was organized for them. Photos and articles about the Kola Superdeep Pit circulated in all the world's leading newspapers and magazines, and postage stamps were issued in its honor in several countries.

But the main thing is that a real sensation was prepared especially for the congress. It turned out that rock samples taken at a 3-kilometer depth of the Kola well are completely identical to lunar soil (it was first delivered to Earth by the Soviet automatic space station Luna-16 in 1970).

Scientists have long assumed that the Moon was once part of the Earth and was torn away from it as a result of a cosmic catastrophe. Now it was possible to say that the breakaway part of our planet, billions of years ago, came into contact with the area of ​​​​the current Kola Peninsula.

The ultra-deep well became a real triumph of Soviet science. Researchers, designers, even ordinary workers were honored and awarded for almost a whole year.

Kola superdeep well, 2007

Gold in the deep

At this time, work on the Kola superdeep mine was suspended. They were resumed only in September 1984. And the very first launch led to a major accident. The employees seemed to have forgotten that changes were constantly taking place inside the underground passage. The well does not forgive stopping work - and forces you to start all over again.

As a result, the drill string broke, leaving five kilometers of pipes deep. They tried to get them, but after a few months it became clear that this would not be possible.

Drilling work began again from the 7-kilometer mark. They approached a depth of 12 kilometers for the second time only six years later. In 1990, the maximum was reached - 12,262 meters.

And then the operation of the well was affected by both failures on a local scale and events taking place in the country. The capabilities of the existing technology were exhausted, and government funding decreased sharply. After several serious accidents, drilling was stopped in 1992.

The scientific significance of the Kola Superdeep is difficult to overestimate. First of all, work on it confirmed the guess about rich deposits of minerals at great depths. Of course, precious metals were not found there in their pure form. But at the nine-kilometer mark, seams with a gold content of 78 grams per ton were discovered (active industrial mining is carried out when this content is 34 grams per ton).

In addition, the analysis of ancient deep rocks made it possible to clarify the age of the Earth - it turned out that it is one and a half billion years older than was commonly thought.

It was believed that at super depths there is no and cannot be organic life, but in soil samples raised to the surface, which were three billion years old, 14 previously unknown species of fossilized microorganisms were discovered.

Shortly before its closure, in 1989, the Kola Superdeep Pipe again became the center of international attention. The director of the well, academician David Guberman, suddenly began to receive calls and letters from all over the world. Scientists, journalists, and simply inquisitive citizens were interested in the question: is it true that an ultra-deep well has become a “well to hell”?

It turned out that representatives of the Finnish press talked with some employees of the Kola Superdeep. And they admitted: when the drill passed the 12-kilometer mark, strange noises began to be heard from the depths of the well. The workers lowered a heat-resistant microphone instead of the drill head - and with its help they recorded sounds reminiscent of human screams. One of the employees put forward the version that this the cries of sinners in hell.

How true are such stories? Technically, placing a microphone instead of a drill is difficult, but possible. True, the work to lower it may take several weeks. And it would hardly have been possible to carry it out at a sensitive facility instead of drilling. But, on the other hand, many well employees actually heard strange sounds that regularly came from the depths. And no one knew for sure what it could be.

At the instigation of Finnish journalists, the world press published a number of articles claiming that the Kola superdeep is “the road to hell.” Mystical significance began to be attributed to the fact that the USSR collapsed when the drillers were excavating the “unlucky” thirteen thousand meters.

In 1995, when the station was already mothballed, an incomprehensible explosion occurred in the depths of the mine - if only for the reason that there was nothing there to explode. Foreign newspapers reported that through a passage made by people, a demon flew from the bowels of the Earth to the surface (the publications were full of headlines like “Satan escaped from hell”).

Well director David Guberman honestly admitted in his interview: he does not believe in hell and demons, but an incomprehensible explosion actually took place, as did strange noises reminiscent of voices. Moreover, an examination carried out after the explosion showed that all the equipment was in perfect order.

Kola superdeep well, 2012

The well itself (welded), August 2012

Museum for 100 million

For a long time, the well was considered mothballed; about 20 employees worked on it (in the 1980s their number exceeded 500). In 2008, the facility was completely closed and some of the equipment was dismantled. The above-ground part of the well is a building the size of a 12-story building, now it is abandoned and is gradually collapsing. Sometimes tourists come here, attracted by legends about voices from hell.

According to employees of the Geological Institute of the Kola Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which previously owned the well, its restoration would cost 100 million rubles.

But we are no longer talking about scientific work at depth: on the basis of this facility, one can only open an institute or other enterprise for training offshore drilling specialists. Or create a museum - after all, the Kola well continues to be the deepest in the world.

Anastasia BABANOVSKAYA, magazine "Secrets of the 20th Century" No. 5 2017

In the 50-70s of the last century, the world changed at incredible speed. Things have appeared that are difficult to imagine today’s world without: the Internet, computers, cellular communications, the conquest of space and the depths of the sea. Man was rapidly expanding the spheres of his presence in the Universe, but he still had rather rough ideas about the structure of his “home” - planet Earth. Although even then the idea of ​​ultra-deep drilling was not new: back in 1958, the Americans launched the project "Mohole". Its name is formed from two words:

Moho– surface named after Andrija Mohorovicic– Croatian geophysicist and seismologist, who in 1909 identified the lower boundary of the earth’s crust, at which an abrupt increase in the speed of seismic waves occurs;
Hole- well, hole, opening. Based on assumptions that the thickness of the earth's crust under the oceans is much less than on land, 5 wells were drilled near the island of Guadelupe with a depth of about 180 meters (with an ocean depth of up to 3.5 km). Over five years, researchers drilled five wells, collected many samples from the basalt layer, but did not reach the mantle. As a result, the project was declared a failure and the work was stopped.

The CUSS vessel, which carried out the Mohole project

One of the main goals of the expedition “On the Roads of the Arctic” was the Kola superdeep well (or object SG-3) - the deepest in the world. I first learned about it back in 2004, while studying in the first year of the Geological Faculty of the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, at a lecture on general geology. And since then I hoped to see everything with my own eyes.

Times have changed and, once inaccessible, the territory of the SG-3 facility is now in close proximity to the mining and processing plant of the Kola Mining and Metallurgical Company. And the route to the well goes through technological roads.

If you follow the navigator, then after the town of Zapolyarny it will lead to the checkpoint of the mining and processing plant. Security, of course, won’t let you into the territory, and I supposedly haven’t heard anything about the Kola Superdeep.

The management of the plant, as expected, was tired of the constant pilgrimage to the Kola superdeep of various kinds of neo-stalkers, geology lovers and metal hunters, so the road to the well was dug up with excavators and sprinkled with cobblestones for good measure.

Therefore, we return to the place where the mobile Internet last worked and look for a well-established alternative road via satellite. Having found the treasured hole, we raise the hydropneumatic suspension of our Toyota Land Cruiser 200 Executive to the top position and crawl up the hills towards the well.

The road, as befits a real adventure, was replete with various kinds of obstacles - fords, stones, even lakes.

Having already returned to Murmansk and analyzing the GPS track (we wrote the entire route using the locme.ru service, I will talk about it later), I noticed that we were not driving to the well along the optimal route and somewhere lost our way, but back We've already gone as far as we should. Which I don’t regret one bit.

The track was recorded using the LocMe service

And now, having climbed another hill, we have a view of the once majestic research and production complex of the Kola superdeep well.

In an effort to take a leading position in all industries at once, in 1962 the USSR launched its ultra-deep drilling program.

It took 4 years to prepare the project: the main difficulty was that according to the geothermal gradient (a physical quantity that describes the increase in the temperature of rocks with depth), the temperature at a depth of 10 km should be about 300°C, and at 15 km - almost 500°C WITH. Neither the drilling tool nor the measuring equipment were designed for such a temperature. By 1970, just in time for the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s birth, a drilling site was found - an ancient crystalline shield of the Kola Peninsula. According to a report from the Institute of Physics of the Earth, over billions of years the Kola Shield cooled; the temperature at a depth of 15 km should not have exceeded 150°C. According to the approximate section, the first 7 kilometers should be composed of granite strata of the upper part of the earth's crust, and basalts begin below. The drilling site was chosen on the northern tip of the Kola Peninsula near Lake Vilgiskoddeoaivinjärvi (in Finnish it means “Under the Wolf Mountain”). Drilling of the well, the design depth of which was 15 kilometers, began in May 1970.

Despite the non-trivial task, no special equipment was developed for the work - we worked with what we had. At the first stages, a Uralmash 4E drilling rig with a lifting capacity of 200 tons and light-alloy aluminum pipes were used. Expensive aluminum was used for a number of reasons: pipes made of “winged metal” have much less weight, and at temperatures above 150-160 degrees, the steel of serial pipes softens and is less able to withstand multi-ton loads - because of this, the likelihood of dangerous deformations and column breakage increases. When the well reached depth 7000 meters, a new drilling rig was installed on the site "Uralmash 15000"- one of the most modern at that time. Powerful, reliable, with an automatic hoisting mechanism, it could withstand a pipe string up to 15 km long. The drilling rig turned into a fully sheathed tower 68 m high, defying the strong winds raging in the Arctic. The weight of the drill string alone at a depth of 15 kilometers would reach 200 tons. And the installation itself could lift a load of up to 400 tons. A mechanical repair plant, scientific laboratories and a core storage facility grew nearby. : in the 70s, rotary drilling was most widespread, when the entire string of pipes was turned by a rotor located on the surface. This method was excellent for relatively shallow wells, but when the bore length approaches 7,000 or even 10,000 meters, rotary drilling becomes powerless. At SG-3, drilling was carried out using a turbodrill - a hydraulic engine, the rotation of which was provided by the energy of the circulating drilling fluid. The 46 meter sections installed at the lower end of the column rotated the drill bit. Neither in the USSR nor in the world at that time there was any experience in drilling in crystalline basement rocks at such depths, and in addition to purely technological problems, the work was complicated by 100% core sampling. The penetration in one trip, determined by the wear of the drill head, is usually 7-10 m (a trip, or cycle, is the lowering of the string with the turbine and drilling tool, the actual drilling and the complete lifting of the string.) The drilling itself takes 4 hours, and the lowering takes The ascent of the 12-kilometer column takes about 18 hours. When lifted, the column is automatically disassembled into sections (candles) 33 m long. On average, 60 m were drilled per month. 50 km of pipes were used to drill the last 5 km of the well. This is the extent of their wear.

Approaching the territory of SG-3, we saw the “Loaf” and people fussily putting pieces of iron inside. This picture has long become familiar to the once advanced scientific center - it was assumed that the Kola superdeep well, after completion of its excavation, would be turned into a unique natural laboratory for studying deep processes occurring in the earth's crust using special instruments. However, in 2008, the facility was finally abandoned, and all more or less valuable equipment was dismantled. From that moment on, a period of plundering of everything that was of any value began - primarily metal.

The metal thieves, however, turned out to be quite sociable guys; they were sincerely surprised why we came here from Moscow - “there was nothing left right there!” and showed the legendary well. Now it is mothballed, and its mouth is closed by a steel plate. Nobody knows what happens in the trunk itself.

On the basis of SG-3, in addition to the drilling site itself, there were several research institutes, its own design bureau, a turning shop, and a forge. The most daring technical solutions were born right on site, implemented on our own, and after a few days they were already tested in operation. All this required energy and the Kola Superdeep was served by its own substation. Now the power unit looks like this; at one time 48 people worked here.

Boxes with unique equipment are piled at the entrance. Everything valuable is torn out “with meat”:

And a little further away there are power line supports. All the wires, of course, had been cut off long ago.

According to the directive from above, only domestic equipment was used at SG-3, and it could not have been any other way: at first, the well was a top-secret security facility. Up to a depth of 7 km, serial devices were used. Working at greater depths and at higher temperatures required the creation of special heat and pressure resistant devices. Particular difficulties arose during the last stage of drilling; when the temperature in the well approached 200 o C, and the pressure exceeded 1000 atmospheres, serial devices could no longer work. Geophysical design bureaus and specialized laboratories of several research institutes came to the rescue, producing single copies of heat- and pressure-resistant equipment. The competition for employment consisted of dozens of people per position, and those who passed a rigorous selection process were immediately given an apartment. At a time when an ordinary Soviet engineer received 120 rubles a month, an engineer at the Kola Superdeep Well earned an incredible 850 rubles - three salaries and you can buy a car. In total, about 300 people worked at the Kola Superdeep.

The depth of 7000 meters turned out to be fatal for the Kola superdeep

Depth in 7000 meters turned out to be extremely fatal for Kola. Higher up the section, drilling proceeded relatively calmly; the drill passed through homogeneous, durable granites. But after this depth, the drill head entered less durable layered rocks, and the barrel could not be kept vertical. When the well passed the 12 km mark for the first time, the shaft deviated from the vertical by 21°. Although the drillers had already learned to work with the incredible curvature of the barrel, it was impossible to go any further. The well had to be drilled from the 7 kilometer mark. To get a vertical shaft in hard rocks, you need a very hard bottom of the drill string so that it goes into the subsurface like a knife into butter. But another problem arises - the well gradually expands, the drill dangles in it, like in a glass, the walls of the barrel begin to collapse and can crush the tool. The solution to this problem turned out to be original - pendulum technology was used. The drill was artificially rocked in the well and suppressed strong vibrations. Due to this, the trunk turned out vertical. June 6, 1979 the first historical event happened. The drillers reported reaching the mark at 9584 meters. The Kola well became the deepest well in the world, surpassing the American oil record holder Bertha Rogers (9583 meters).

On June 6, 1979, drilling foreman Fedor Atarshchikov made a triumphant entry in the logbook: “The face is 9584 meters. “Bertha Rogers,” ciao, good bye.”

In the early 1980s a second historical event also occurred. The Kola superdeep has passed 11,022 meters, bypassing the Mariana Trench. Humanity has never reached such a depth inside its own cradle. One of the most common drilling accidents is stuck drilling tools, a situation where the crumbling walls of the well block the string and prevent the tool from rotating. Often, attempts to pull out a stuck column end in its breakage. It is useless to look for a tool in a 10-kilometer well; such a shaft was abandoned and a new one was started, a little higher. Breakage and loss of pipes at SG-3 happened many times. As a result, in its lower part the well looks like the root system of a giant plant. The branching of the well upset the drillers, but turned out to be a blessing for geologists, who unexpectedly received a three-dimensional picture of an impressive stretch of ancient Archean rocks formed more than 2.5 billion years ago.

Walking through the deserted corridors of the complex, despite the general monstrous devastation, you feel the former grandeur of what happened here. In one of the offices, the floor is strewn with rare scientific literature - issues of the magazine "Defectoscopy" for several years and a manual for calculating drill strings for ultra-deep wells - the uniqueness of scientific work is approximately comparable to "instructions for flying to the Moon for dummies", if it existed.

In another there is a miraculously preserved workplace of a drilling foreman. The first well in Russia was drilled in 1864 in Kuban. From then until now, the foreman almost always works directly at the drilling site in order to see and control everything that is happening. But on the Kola superdeep it was not so! The operator sat as much as 250 meters from the mouth and monitored everything remotely, including the drilling parameters. Space!

The walls are shabby, the glass is broken by the harsh northern wind, but you can’t leave the feeling that a laboratory assistant is about to enter the office and drive out the uninvited guests.

IN September 1984 depth was reached for the first time 12,066 meters, and then another break in the drill string occurred. This became a real tragedy for the drilling crew, because they had to start almost all over again, all from the same 7 kilometers, again and again passing through cracks and caverns of the lower layer of the earth's crust. At the same time, within the framework of the World Geological Congress, the work carried out in the Arctic was declassified. In the scientific world, the SG-3 well created a real sensation. A large delegation of geologists and journalists went to the village of Zapolyarny. Visitors were shown the drilling rig in action; 33-meter sections of pipes were removed and disconnected. Around there were dozens of exactly the same drill bits as the one lying on the stand in Moscow. The USSR confirmed its status as a leading power in the field of deep drilling.

IN June 1990 when SG-3 reached depth 12,262 m, preparatory work began for excavation of up to 14 km, an accident occurred again. At 8,550 m, the pipe string broke. Continuing the work required a long and expensive update of equipment, so in 1994 drilling of the Kola superdeep was stopped. All possibilities of modern technology have been exhausted. After 3 years, she entered the Guinness Book of Records and remains unsurpassed to this day.

What did ultra-deep drilling on the Kola Peninsula give to humanity?

First of all, she refuted the simple two-layer structure of the Earth. The geological section compiled on the basis of the SG-3 core turned out to be exactly the opposite of what scientists had previously imagined. The first 7 kilometers were composed of volcanic and sedimentary rocks: tuffs, basalts, breccias, sandstones, dolomites. Deeper lay the so-called Conrad section, after which the speed of seismic waves in the rocks sharply increased, which was interpreted as the boundary between granites and basalts. This section was passed a long time ago, but the basalts of the lower layer of the earth’s crust never appeared anywhere. On the contrary, granites and gneisses began to appear.
One of the most important goals of drilling was to obtain a core (a cylindrical column of rock) along the entire length of the well. The longest core in the world was marked like a ruler into meters and placed in the appropriate order in boxes. The box number and sample numbers are indicated at the top. There are almost 900 such boxes in stock.

Seismic sections in the subsurface, as it turned out, are not the boundaries of layers of rocks of different compositions. Rather, they indicate changes in the petrophysical properties of rocks with depth. At high pressure and temperature, the properties change so much that granites in their physical characteristics become similar to basalts, and vice versa. It was believed that with depth and increasing pressure, the porosity and fracturing of rocks decreases. However, starting from the 9-kilometer mark, the strata turned out to be abnormally porous and fractured. Aqueous solutions circulated through a dense system of cracks. This fact was later confirmed by other ultra-deep wells on the continents. It turned out to be much hotter at depth than expected: as much as 80°! At the 7 km mark the temperature in the face was 120°C, at 12 km it had already reached 230°C. Scientists discovered gold mineralization in samples from the Kola well. Insertion of the precious metal was found in ancient rocks at a depth of 9.5-10.5 km. However, the concentration of gold was too low to declare a deposit - an average of 37.7 mg per ton of rock, but sufficient to expect it in other similar places. The Kola superdeep well aged the Earth by as much as 1.5 billion years: life on the planet appeared earlier than expected. At depths where it was believed that there was no organic matter, more than 17 species of fossilized microorganisms - microfossils - were discovered, and the age of these deep layers exceeded 2.8 billion years. And more than a dozen more narrowly targeted discoveries.

In total, about 30 ultra-deep wells were drilled on the territory of the USSR

Few people know, but more than 30 ultra-deep wells were drilled on the territory of the former USSR (today, all or almost all of them have been destroyed). They were connected to each other using special transects (measurement lines), obtaining regional geological profiles many thousands of kilometers long. Special geophysical equipment was placed along the transects, which recorded all the processes occurring in the subsoil at a single time. Until 1991, underground nuclear explosions were used as sources of excitation (a pulse that was recorded in wells).

This fundamentally new technical and methodological approach to solving the regional deep structure of the earth's crust and upper mantle was based on integrating data from ultra-deep and deep drilling, as well as seismic deep sounding and other geophysical and geochemical methods. For the territory of the USSR, a system of mutual correlation of geophysical profile data based on reference ultra-deep wells was developed. All this made it possible to carry out a fairly detailed zoning, primarily of promising zones from the point of view of oil, gas and ore deposits, on a national scale.

The cost of restoration is 100 million rubles?

In his interviews, the director of the Geological Institute of the Kola Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences claims that for 100 million rubles it is possible even now to restore the complex of the Kola superdeep well, open a scientific and technical center on its basis and train specialists in offshore drilling. It is quite obvious to me that this is not the case. And the issue, unfortunately, is not about money. A unique object, comparable in scale and significance to humanity only with human space flight, has been lost. And lost forever.

After SG-3, many attempts have been and are being made around the world to look into the deep horizons of the Earth’s interior, but unfortunately, not a single project has come close in importance to the work carried out in the Arctic.

- What is the most important thing the Kola well showed?
- Gentlemen! The main thing is that it showed that we know nothing about the continental crust

How to get to the Kola superdeep well? Points, coordinates, etc.

1. From Murmansk by road A138 moving towards the city of Nikel;
2. At the point 69.479533, 31.824395 there will be a checkpoint where documents will be checked;
3. Let's go further to 69.440422, 30.594060 where we turn left;
4. We continue along the technological road until 69.416088, 30.684387 ;
5. The filled road should be on the right hand at the point 69.408826, 30.661051 ;
6. We go further and carefully look at the lapel on the left hand. I went here: 69.414850, 30.613894 ;
7. Next we move along the well-worn path, but at the point 69.411232, 30.608956 you need to stay to the right.
8. Coordinates of the well itself 69.396326, 30.609513 .

Back in 1990, in the southern part of Germany, a group of scientists decided to look into the depths of our planet at the junction of two tectonic plates that collided more than 300 million years ago, when the continent was formed. The final goal of the scientists was to drill one of the deepest wells in the world, up to 10 km.

Initially, it was assumed that the well would become a kind of “telescope”, which would make it possible to learn more about the depths of our planet and try to learn about the Earth’s core. The drilling process took place as part of the Continental Deep Drilling program and lasted until October 1994, when the program had to be curtailed due to financial problems.

The well was named Kontinentales Tiefbohrprogramm der Bundesrepublik, abbreviated KTB, and by the time the program was closed it had been drilled to more than 9 km, which did not add enthusiasm to the scientists. The drilling process itself was not easy. For 4 years, scientists, engineers and workers had to face a whole bunch of difficult situations and quite complex tasks. For example, the drill had to pass through rocks heated to a temperature of about 300 degrees Celsius, but even under such conditions, the drillers still managed to cool the hole with liquid hydrogen.

However, despite the fact that the program was curtailed, scientific experiments did not stop and were carried out until the end of 1995, and it is worth noting that they were not carried out in vain. During this time, it was possible to discover new, rather unexpected facts about the structure of our planet, new temperature distribution maps were compiled and data on the distribution of seismic pressure were obtained, which made it possible to create models of the layered structure of the upper part of the Earth's surface.

However, scientists saved the most interesting for last. Dutch scientist Lott Given, who, together with acoustic engineers and scientists from the Geophysical Research Center (Germany), did what many had dreamed of - almost in the literal sense of the word, he “heard the heartbeat” of the Earth. To do this, he and his team needed to carry out acoustic measurements, with which the research team recreated the sounds that we could hear at a depth of 9 kilometers. However, now you can hear these sounds too.

Despite the fact that KTB is currently considered the deepest well in the world, there are several similar wells, which, however, have already been sealed. And among them, a well stands out, which during its existence has managed to acquire legends; this is the Kola super-deep well-well, better known as the “Road to Hell”. Unlike other competitors of KTB, the Kola well reached 12.2 km in depth and was considered the deepest well in the world.

Its drilling began in 1970 in the Murmansk region (Soviet Union, now the Russian Federation), 10 kilometers west of the city of Zapolyarny. During drilling, the well experienced several accidents, as a result of which workers had to concrete the well and start drilling from a much shallower depth and at a different angle. It is interesting that it is with a series of accidents and failures that haunt the group that the reason for the emergence of the legend that the well was drilled all the way to the real Hell is associated.

As the text of the legend says, after passing the 12 km mark, scientists were able to hear the sounds of screams using microphones. However, they decided to continue drilling and while passing the next mark (14 km), they suddenly came across voids. After the scientists lowered the microphones, they heard the screams and moans of men and women. And after some time, an accident occurred, after which it was decided to stop drilling work

And, despite the fact that the accident really happened, scientists did not hear any screams of people, and all the talk about demons was nothing more than fiction, said David Mironovich Guberman, one of the authors of the project, under whose leadership the well was drilled.

After another accident in 1990, upon reaching a depth of 12,262 meters, drilling was completed, and in 2008, the project was abandoned and the equipment was dismantled. Two years later, in 2010, the well was mothballed.

Let us note that projects such as drilling wells such as the KTV and Kola wells are currently the only way and opportunity for geologists to study the interior of the planet.

The USSR is a country that surprised the world with many projects, grandiose both in scale and in cost. One of these projects was called "Kola superdeep well" (SG-3). Its implementation began in the Murmansk region, 10 km west of the city of Zapolyarny.

Scientists wanted to learn more about the bowels of the earth, and “to wipe the nose” of the American scientists who abandoned their Mohol project due to lack of funds. To the question about what is the deepest well in the world, Soviet geologists dreamed of proudly answering: ours!

We will talk in detail about whether such an ambitious idea was a success and what fate awaited the Kola well in this article.

Back in the 50s of the twentieth century, most of the material about the structure of the Earth was theoretical. Everything changed in the early 60s and 70s, when the United States and the Soviet Union began a new version of the “space race” - a race to the center of the Earth, so to speak.

The Kola superdeep well was a unique project funded by the USSR and then Russia from 1970 to 1995. It was not drilled for the extraction of “black gold” or “blue fuel”, but purely for scientific research purposes.

• First of all, Soviet scientists were interested in whether the assumption about the structure of the lower (granite and basalt) layers of the earth's crust would be confirmed.
• They also wanted to find and explore the boundaries between these layers and the mantle - one of the “engines” that ensures the constant evolution of the planet.
• At that time, geologists and geophysicists had only indirect evidence of what was happening in the earth's crust, and ultra-deep wells were needed to better understand the processes underlying geology. Moreover, the most reliable way is direct observation.

The drilling site was chosen in the northeastern part of the Baltic shield. There are little-studied igneous rocks there that are believed to be three billion years old. And on the territory of the Kola Peninsula there is the Pechenga structure, shaped like a bowl. There are deposits of copper and nickel there. One of the scientists’ tasks was to study the process of ore formation.

Even to this day, the information collected through this project is still being analyzed and interpreted.

Features of drilling an ultra-deep well

For the first four years, while excavation was going on to a depth of 7263 meters, a standard drilling rig called “Uralmash-4E” was used. But then her capabilities began to fall short.

Therefore, the researchers decided to use the powerful Uralmash-15000 installation with a 46-meter turbo drill. It rotated due to the pressure of the drilling fluid.

The Uralmash-15000 installation was designed so that samples of the mined rock were collected in a core receiver - a pipe passing through all sections of the drill. The crushed rock reached the surface along with the drilling fluid. This way, geologists received the latest information about the composition of the well as the drilling rig went deeper and deeper down.

As a result, several boreholes were drilled, which branched out from one central well. The deepest branch was named SG-3.

As one of the scientists on the Kola Exploration Exploration team said: “Every time we start drilling, we find the unexpected. It's exciting and disturbing at the same time."

Granite, granite everywhere

The first surprise that the drillers encountered was the absence of the so-called basalt layer at a depth of about 7 km. Previously, the most up-to-date geological information about the deeper parts of the Earth's crust came from the analysis of seismic waves. And based on it, scientists expected to find a granite layer, and as they deepened, a basalt layer. But, to their great surprise, when they moved deeper into the bowels of the Earth, they found more granite there, but did not reach the basalt layer at all. All drilling took place in the granite layer.

This is extremely important, as it is connected with the theory of the layer-by-layer structure of the Earth. And this, in turn, is associated with ideas about how minerals arise and are located.

The Kola superdeep well is a source of not only valuable knowledge, but also a terrible urban legend.

Having reached a depth of 14.5 thousand meters, the drillers allegedly discovered voids. Having lowered equipment there that could withstand extremely high temperatures, they found that the temperature in the voids reaches 1100 degrees Celsius. And the microphone, before melting, recorded 17 seconds of audio, which was immediately dubbed the “sounds of hell.” These were the cries of damned souls.

The first appearance of this story was recorded in 1989, and its first large-scale publication took place on the American television network Trinity Broadcasting Network. And she borrowed material from a Finnish Christian publication called Ammennusastia.

The story was then widely reprinted in small Christian publications, newsletters, etc., but received virtually no coverage from the mainstream media. Some evangelists cited this incident as evidence of the existence of a physical hell.

• People familiar with the operating principles of acoustic well exploration tools only laughed at this story. After all, in this case, acoustic logging probes are used, which catch the wave pattern of reflected elastic vibrations.
• Maximum depth of SG-3 - 12,262 meters. This is deeper than even the deepest part of the ocean, the Challenger Deep (10,994 meters).
• The highest temperature in it did not rise above 220 C.

• And one more important fact: it is unlikely that a microphone or drilling equipment could withstand hellish heat above a thousand degrees.

In 1992, the American newspaper Weekly World News published an alternative version of the story, which took place in Alaska, where 13 miners were killed after Satan broke out of Hell.

If you are interested in this legend, then you can easily find videos with relevant investigations on Youtube. Just don't take them too seriously, some (if not all) of the audio purporting to be the screams of sufferers in the Underworld is taken from the 1972 film Baron Blood.

What scientists found at the bottom of the Kola superdeep well

• Firstly, water was discovered at a depth of 9 km. It was believed that it simply should not exist at this depth - and yet it was there. We now understand that even deep-lying granite in the ground can develop cracks that fill with water. Technically speaking, water is simply hydrogen and oxygen atoms forced out by the enormous pressure caused by depth and trapped in layers of rock.

• Second, the researchers reported recovering mud that was "boiling with hydrogen." Such a large amount of hydrogen at great depths was a completely unexpected phenomenon.
• Thirdly, the bottom of the Kola well turned out to be incredibly hot - 220°C.
• Without a doubt, the biggest surprise was the discovery of life. At depths of over 6,000 meters, microscopic plankton fossils have been discovered that have been there for three billion years. In total, about 24 ancient species of microorganisms were discovered that somehow survived the extreme pressure and high temperatures below the earth's surface. This has raised many questions about the potential survival of life forms at great depths. Modern research has shown that life can exist even in the oceanic crust, but at the time the discovery of these fossils came as a shock.

Despite all the efforts of the drillers and decades of hard work, the Kola superdeep well was only 0.18% of the way to the center of the Earth. Scientists believe that the distance to it is about 6,400 kilometers.

Abandoned but not forgotten

Currently there are no personnel or equipment on SG-3. This is one of the. And only a rusty hatch in the ground reminds of the grandiose project, listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the deepest human invasion into the planet’s crust.

The project was closed in 1995 due to (you guessed it) lack of funding. Even earlier, in 1992, drilling work in the well was curtailed, as geologists were faced with higher than expected temperatures - 220 degrees. Heat causes damage to equipment. And the higher the temperature, the more difficult it is to drill. It's like trying to create and hold a hole in the center of a pot of hot soup.

By 2008, the research and production center operating at the well was completely abolished. And all drilling and research equipment was disposed of.

Results of the work

The valiant efforts of the Kola GRE participants lasted several decades. However, the final goal - the 15 thousand meters mark - was never achieved. But the work done in the USSR and then in Russia provided a wealth of information about what lies just below the earth's surface, and it remains scientifically useful.

• Unique equipment and technology for ultra-deep drilling were developed and successfully tested.
• Valuable information was obtained about what rocks are made of and what properties they have at different depths.
• At a depth of 1.6-1.8 km, copper-nickel deposits of industrial importance were found.
• The theoretical picture expected at 5000 meters was not confirmed. No basalts were found either in this or in the deeper sections of the well. But unexpectedly they discovered not very strong rocks called granite gneisses.
• Gold was found in the interval from 9 to 12 thousand meters. However, they did not begin to mine it from such a depth - it was unprofitable.

• Changes were made to the theories about the thermal regime of the earth's interior.
• It turned out that the origin of 50% of the heat flow is associated with the decay of radioactive substances.

SG-3 revealed many secrets to geologists. And at the same time it raised many questions that still remain unanswered. Perhaps some of them will be produced during the operation of other ultra-deep wells.

The deepest wells on Earth (table)

Place	Well name	Years of drilling	Drilling depth, m.
10	Shevchenkovskaya-1	1982	7 520
9	Yen-Yakhinskaya superdeep well (SG-7)	2000–2006	8 250
8	Saatlinskaya superdeep well (SG-1)	1977–1982	8 324
7	Zisterdorf		8 553
6	University		8 686
5	KTB Hauptborung	1990–1994	9 100
4	Baden-Unit		9 159
3	Bertha Rogers	1973–1974	9 583
2	KTB-Oberpfalz	1990–1994	9 900
1	Kola superdeep well (SG-3)	1970–1990	12 262

The Kola superdeep well is the deepest borehole in the world. It is located in the Murmansk region, 10 kilometers west of the city of Zapolyarny, on the territory of the geological Baltic shield. Its depth is 12,262 meters. Unlike other ultra-deep wells that were made for oil production or geological exploration, SG-3 was drilled solely to study the lithosphere in the place where the Mohorovicic boundary comes close to the Earth's surface.

The Kola superdeep well was laid in honor of the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s birth, in 1970.
Sedimentary rock strata by that time had been well studied during oil production. It was more interesting to drill where volcanic rocks about 3 billion years old (for comparison: the age of the Earth is estimated at 4.5 billion years) come to the surface. For mining, such rocks are rarely drilled deeper than 1-2 km. It was assumed that already at a depth of 5 km the granite layer would be replaced by basalt.

On June 6, 1979, the well broke the record of 9,583 meters previously held by the Bertha-Rogers oil well in Oklahoma. In the best years, 16 research laboratories worked at the Kola superdeep well, they were personally supervised by the Minister of Geology of the USSR.

What happens in the depths is not known for certain. Ambient temperature, noise and other parameters are transmitted upward with a minute delay. However, drillers say that even such contact with the underground can be seriously frightening. The sounds coming from below really look like screams and howls. To this we can add a long list of accidents that plagued the Kola Superdeep when it reached a depth of 10 kilometers.

Twice the drill was taken out melted, although the temperatures at which it can melt are comparable to the temperature of the surface of the Sun. One day, it was as if the cable had been pulled from below and was torn off. Subsequently, when they drilled in the same place, no remains of the cable were found. What caused these and many other accidents still remains a mystery. However, they were not the reason for stopping drilling in the Baltic Shield.

Excavation of the core to the surface.

Extracted core.

Although it was expected that a clear boundary between granites and basalts would be discovered, only granites were found in the core throughout the depth. However, due to the high pressure, the compressed granites greatly changed the physical and acoustic properties.
As a rule, the lifted core crumbled due to active gas release into sludge, since it could not withstand a sharp change in pressure. It was possible to remove a strong piece of core only with a very slow lifting of the drill, when the “excess” gas, still pressed to high pressure, managed to escape from the rock.
The density of cracks at great depths, contrary to expectations, increased. There was also water at depth that filled the cracks.

Tricone chisel.

Eruptive basalt breccia from a depth of 2977.8 m

“We have the deepest hole in the world - so we must use it!” – David Guberman, the permanent director of the Kola Superdeep Research and Production Center, exclaims bitterly. In the first 30 years of the Kola Superdeep, Soviet and then Russian scientists broke through to a depth of 12,262 meters. But since 1995, drilling has been stopped: there was no one to finance the project. What is allocated within the framework of UNESCO's scientific programs is only enough to maintain the drilling station in working condition and study previously extracted rock samples.

Huberman recalls with regret how many scientific discoveries took place at the Kola Superdeep. Literally every meter was a revelation. The well showed that almost all of our previous knowledge about the structure of the earth's crust is incorrect. It turned out that the Earth is not at all like a layer cake. “Up to 4 kilometers everything went according to theory, and then the end of the world began,” says Huberman. Theorists promised that the temperature of the Baltic Shield would remain relatively low to a depth of at least 15 kilometers. Accordingly, it will be possible to dig a well up to almost 20 kilometers, just up to the mantle.

But already at 5 kilometers the ambient temperature exceeded 70 degrees Celsius, at seven - over 120 degrees, and at a depth of 12 it was hotter than 220 degrees - 100 degrees higher than predicted. Kola drillers questioned the theory of the layered structure of the earth's crust - at least in the interval up to 12,262 meters.

Another surprise: life on planet Earth turns out to have arisen 1.5 billion years earlier than expected. At depths where it was believed that there was no organic matter, 14 species of fossilized microorganisms were discovered - the age of the deep layers exceeded 2.8 billion years. At even greater depths, where there are no longer sediments, methane appeared in huge concentrations. This completely and utterly destroyed the theory of the biological origin of hydrocarbons such as oil and gas.

There were almost fantastic sensations. When, in the late 70s, the Soviet automatic space station brought 124 grams of lunar soil to Earth, researchers at the Kola Science Center found that it was like two peas in a pod to samples from a depth of 3 kilometers. And a hypothesis arose: the Moon broke away from the Kola Peninsula. Now they are looking for where exactly. By the way, the Americans, who brought half a ton of soil from the Moon, did nothing meaningful with it. They were placed in airtight containers and left for research by future generations.

The history of the Kola Superdeep is not without mysticism. Officially, as already mentioned, the well stopped due to lack of funds. Coincidence or not, it was precisely in 1995 that a powerful explosion of unknown origin was heard in the depths of the mine.

“When UNESCO began to ask me about this mysterious story, I did not know what to answer. On the one hand, it's bullshit. On the other hand, I, as an honest scientist, could not say that I know what exactly happened to us. A very strange noise was recorded, then there was an explosion... A few days later, nothing like that was found at the same depth,” recalls academician David Guberman.

Quite unexpectedly for everyone, Alexei Tolstoy’s predictions from the novel “Engineer Garin’s Hyperboloid” were confirmed. At a depth of over 9.5 kilometers, a real treasure trove of all kinds of minerals, in particular gold, was discovered. A real olivine layer, brilliantly predicted by the writer. It contains 78 grams of gold per ton. By the way, industrial production is possible at a concentration of 34 grams per ton. Perhaps in the near future humanity will be able to take advantage of this wealth.

This is what the Kola Superdeep looks like now, a deplorable state.